Posts tagged - marijuana

Addicts are Slaves and Oregon is Abetting the Trade

Posted on: November 29, 2023, in: , , ,

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I was born in Portland, Ore., met my wife there, have family who live there and have visited many times over the years. But I no longer recognize the city I once loved, the city with bright lights, clean streets and busy people. The last time I visited, the sidewalks and parks were jammed with homeless people, alleys strewn with garbage, and businesses boarded up. I watched the news during months of rioting in which my church and many other buildings were covered with plywood to protect them from window-smashing looters who emerged at night to raise hell.

Last month, the New York Times published a story in which a reporter and photographer followed a Portland security guard on his rounds as he encountered drug addicts, psychotic people, overdose deaths and foiled an attempted kidnapping as a crazy woman tried to snatch a child she insisted was hers. His 911 calls were answered by a recording and were sometime seven  disconnected, as overwhelmed police officers struggled to keep up.

So what changed in the last few decades? Drugs. Apathy. Stupid legislation. Degradation.

Oregon, described in a PBS News Hour episode as “On the leading edge of drug decriminalization,” decriminalized marijuana in 1973,and legalized medical marijuana in 1998. In 2011, The Global Commission on Drug Policy decreed that “The global war on drugs has failed,” which gave permission for states to throw up their hands gut their drug enforcement efforts and follow Oregon’s lead, reducing penalties, legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use, opening so called “harm reduction” centers in which addicts could shoot up with clean needles and get a dose of naloxone if they overdosed, all without fear of arrest. Taxes on marijuana sales, the theory went, could fund mental health and drug treatment, and everything would be rosy.

Oregon continued its “leading edge” position, and passed measure 110, decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. Also in 2020 Oregon voters approved measure 109, the first measure in the United States that established a regulatory framework for the use of psychedelic mushrooms.

I was at university in the 1960s so I experienced a thriving drug culture, and yes, I did inhale, but the harsh 3 Percent THC marijuana seeds and stems of the 1960s have evolved into something cultivated, much stronger and available legally from thousands of weed shops on street corners. The grim lessons of LSD, and other hard drugs have been forgotten by the present generation, and the tie-dyed hippies of the 1960s have been replaced by feces-stained homeless drug addicts junking up many cities such as Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.

Read the NYTimes story on Portland and you can see that the security guard treats the homeless gently, gives them cigarettes, works to de-escalate conflicts and problems, and one can also see that those people are not generally intent on damage. They are however, “on something” which puts them beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior. In pursuit of humane treatment, in making drug addiction an “illness” instead of a criminal act, we are losing our cities to the insane, the destructive, the addicted and the degenerate. Ordinary people have a right to walk the sidewalks without being accosted, without being hassled or screamed at, without being forced to walk in the street to avoid needle-strewn trash and human feces.

And around the state, as overdose deaths spike, Marion, Polk, Jackson and Coos Counties are trying to rescind Measure 110.

And one more thing: It didn’t help when Oregon Public Broadcasting – reporting on efforts to rescind Measure 110 – headlined its story: “Efforts to recriminalize drugs again, supporters include Oregon’s richest businessmen.”  The headline tried to make it into a class war where once again the “fat cats” are stepping on the little guys. It doesn’t take a fat wallet to look around and see what’s happening to our cities and to Portland, all it takes is a walk in the park with eyes open. Addicts are slaves and the Oregon Legislature is abetting this despicable trade.

No Comments

The Drug Addiction Crisis is Your Fault

Posted on: October 09, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Uncle Sam PixabayBy now, everyone is convinced we are in a drug-addiction crisis, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Such as pharmaceutical companies that invented street drugs to begin with. Bayer once touted heroin for headaches,  Abbott Labs promoted methamphetamine as a remedy for alcoholism, Sandoz invented LSD, Merc invented morphine, distributed cocaine, and invented MDMA, and Purdue convinced doctors to prescribe OxyCodone for pain by assuring them that chances of addiction were very slim. And we can blame the doctors who ignored evidence to the contrary.

We can point the finger at pharmacies that order thousands more opioids than will be needed and fill prescriptions far above what makes sense. Pharmaceutical distributors that ignore huge orders for opioids from small pharmacies, and pressure legislators to pass bills that make the DEA impotent to enforce existing rules. DEA and FDA executives who jump ship to work for big pharma at huge increases in salary so they can help build strategies to circumvent legal restrictions on their activities. Psychiatrists and physicians who take money from big pharma and go on to promote medication assisted treatment not for detoxification, but as a permanent opioid-fueled future which will benefit pharmaceutical firms and their stockholders, who put addicts on naloxone and methadone which is much harder to detox than heroin, but has the advantage of diverting money from the street drug dealer to the pharmaceutical drug dealers and their investors. The pharmaceutical companies who invent drugs to block addiction to all but their own drugs, that block death on the street and then – aping the strategies of the most venial drug pushers – raise the prices multiple times, crying that “shortages exist, you’d better hurry!” Correctional institutions who embrace medication assisted treatment to medicate inmates instead of using incarceration as a period of drying out for later life, and did anyone mention investors in big pharma stocks because wow, riches await from more and more addicts using more and more pharmaceuticals?

And there’s plenty of blame for all those judges, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists who help close the gap between prescription drugs and street drugs. For the military exhuming the abominations of MKULTRA by experimenting on those with PTSD, trying a little of this LSD, a little of that marijuana, some wires in the brain – who knows? We might find a way to create a new and better Manchurian Candidate, make robots out of soldiers, make mass murderers out of troubled spirits. And we can blame “non-profit organizations” like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who are spurring interest in using drugs to swap neuroses for outright insanity, organizations who secretly channel millions to legalize marijuana, to companies like Coca-Cola which once contained cocaine for a little boost, which is now going back to its roots, putting marijuana in its product. We can blame the legislators who get swept along in this tsunami of cash and influence, passing bills and listening to drug pushers in suits who convince them that it’s all good, and “here’s a little donation for your next campaign.” Psychiatrists who contend that everyone is basically nuts, so a little drug, a little electroshock, a little wire in the brain certainly couldn’t make you any worse…

But for all the blame to hand around, what about you? Do you know people who have their kids on speed (called ADHD medication by the shrinks)? Do you have a family member who is using marijuana or drinking too much? Are you on an anti-depressant because you feel bad sometimes? Do you get drunk on the weekends to unwind, or smoke a little weed, because after all, it’s legal now? Is your aged mother on “happy pills” so she won’t complain so much about the food, the loss of independence, the minimum-wage helpers telling her what to do in her assisted living facility? Do you nod sympathetically at people who start every conversation with “I’m ADHD” or “Since I was diagnosed with PTSD,” or “I’ve been depressed for some time now.”?

So what are you doing to help make things better? Is it all too big for you? Are you just one person? Are you in agreement with those who try to make addicts poor victims of the system? Who say that addiction, mental illness, criminality is all just a brain disease, not a choice, that we are all just victims of circumstance? We should all just go down the drain together and let the greatest country the world has ever seen evaporate like bong smoke.

Well, grow a pair why don’t you? Do something useful. Someone says. “I’ve got ADHD,” you can retort, “Who gave you that idea?” Someone says “I’m on an anti-depressant,” you can reply “What can you do to handle the situation that’s depressing you?” Someone says “marijuana is legal now, so it’s fine,” you say “So now the government has your best interests – and the taxes on weed – at heart?” Be blunt, invalidate those stupid ideas and self-victimization. Stigma is a good thing – it might help deter a kid thinking about drinking, or using meth or shooting up. Might keep him or her from ending up as a shit-stained twist of laundry in an alley somewhere, or a numbed-out methadone or pharmaceutical junkie for the rest of his or her life.

Do you vote a straight Democratic or Republican ticket, because you’re too lazy to read the voter guide? Or just not vote because there’s nothing you can do about it? Find out who’s taking money from big pharma, from the American Psychiatric Association, from the American Medical Association, the PACs and special interests and vote against them. Vote for those you think might not be in step with a stupider society.

Support religion and spiritual awareness and don’t fall for the efforts to pit one group against another. Support groups that help families, that repair marriages, that support kids and adoption and good education and a prosperous future – and beware of the “everybody-will-agree-with-this” PR and feel-good empty words of the campaign trail. Evaluate the politically correct movements to see if they lead to a better life and a better society, if they do, join, and if they don’t, oppose them even if you get hammered for it on social media.

There’s an old statement to the effect that “You get the government you deserve.” Look at what we’re getting and take some responsibility for it. It’s up to you not to your neighbors or your representatives. The left, the right, the middle, all political stripes have their own agendas, their own railroad tracks leading to their own little utopias. Do you want to travel with them? They make it easy, and they will appeal to your stupider self that thinks life consists of food, sleep and sex, and getting high can handle the rest, all funded by insurance, by taxes on “the fat-cat one percent” or the tiny fines on multi-billion-dollar drug firms.

So what can you do? Join up with effective organizations fighting stupidity and drug-induced dreaming not doing. Check out Foundation for a Drug-Free World, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and other effective anti-drug and anti-stupidity groups. Sure, the organizations I mentioned above are related to the Church of Scientology, and all the crap you’ve heard about Scientology? It’s a measure of just how effective these organizations are in enlightening people on the drug and psychiatric agenda. Those lies and smears in the media? A badge of honor. If they were ineffective, they would be ignored by the psych-drug-media cartel, or perhaps even supported by it.

OK, so this mess is not all your fault, but if everyone woke up and went into action, this drugged-up country could reboot and get back to some basic principles. There are 21 of those principles, and here’s a link to them. Good luck.

No Comments

Medical Soda, Recreational Soda?

Posted on: September 17, 2018, in: , , , , ,

Coke PixabayCoca Cola, whose sales have fallen rapidly in recent years,  is returning to its roots: harmful drugs. When Coca Cola was formulated back in the 1880s, it contained a bit of the old cocaine. Well, public outcry about addiction, etc. quashed that, but now that some states are legalizing weed, Coca Cola is checking out adding weed to their drink.  But not to worry, the company is careful to explain that they are looking at the non-psychoactive CBD oil. Want to bet that the CBD “Medical Coke” will evolve to the THC-laced “Recreational Coke?”

No Comments

Creativity and Drugs

Posted on: July 21, 2018, in: , , , ,

creation-of-man-1159966_1920 (1)A few years ago, I walked with a line of tourists through Vatican City, down hallways hung with old masters, into the Sistine Chapel, where on the ceiling is depicted the creation of Adam – according to some, one of the most significant artistic accomplishments of humanity – representing the gift of life, the birth of the human race.

Art, music and architecture have long been an inspiration, a path up from the mud and toil of ordinary life, inviting mankind to a higher plane of existence, to an exaltation of the spirit. The soaring cathedrals, temples, music and religious art of the past served to remind mankind of higher harmonics of life, of his essentially spiritual nature. And in art as in life, there are many ways that spiritual nature can be expressed – from the otherworldly domes of the Sheikh Zayed mosque, the Great Synagogue of Budapest, to the graceful simplicity of a Shaker meeting house, or a garden of flowers.

Perhaps artistic expression allows man to share the joy of the Creator in fashioning a universe. “The greatest joy there is in life,” said Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, “is creating.”

But creative expression can be difficult, and so drugs have become a sort of shortcut.

Back in the 1960s, my English professor used Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” as an illustration of how drugs could supposedly enhance creativity. The first part, said the professor – written from an opium-induced dream – is vivid and powerful. The second part – flat and uninspired – was written straight.

The professor’s implication for his class of budding writers: If you want to be creative, use drugs.

Such advice is not just a figment of the 1960s, as drugs have been a parasite on creative activity for centuries, and a death sentence to many of the most creative individuals. And the theme that drugs enhance creativity has continued unabated into today’s re-introduction of LSD and other psychedelic substances.

Meanwhile the body count of creative geniuses continues to climb. The death toll includes Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Michael Jackson, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Chris Farley, John Belushi, and thousands of other brilliant men and women in search of a creative edge. Promised altered reality, they chased an elusive high with ever-increasing dosages enslaved by the pain of withdrawal.

But what’s the actual mechanism, and why are drugs often linked to creativity? “Drugs (LSD, marijuana, alcohol, whatever) produce a threat to the body like any other poison,” said L. Ron Hubbard in an essay on 8 Jan. 1969. And when the body is threatened, the being himself feels threatened with oblivion and so begins to obsessively create. What he creates are hallucinations. His reality is then filled with things not actually there, but a composite of his surroundings plus imagination plus things from his past. “Such persons as drug takers and the insane,” said Hubbard, “are thus slightly or wholly on an apparently different time track of … events.”

Creative people go out of agreement with everyday reality, and that vision of new possibilities is why we cherish and generously reward those who create the future. But drugs merely fill the body with poison, to squeeze a bag of nightmares, and what comes out is seldom creative or illuminating, and the results are often addiction and death for the writer, artist, painter, architect, or musician who experiments with drugs. And so the promise of the spirit, engendered in the aesthetics of art, often ends up – through drugs – mired in degradation, addiction and insanity.

Creativity has long been a sort of magical realm, a connection with the Muses, those daughters of Zeus who inspired mere mortals to wonderful creations. But drugs deny the spirit, fill the body with poison to try and squeeze out a few new ideas or a song lyric. As such, drugs are the antithesis of a life of the spirit and often spell the end of a promising and creative career.

No Comments

Today’s Traveling Patent-Medicine Show

Posted on: May 14, 2018, in: , , , , , ,

heroin bottleA hundred years ago, traveling shows peddled patent medicine, sometimes one step ahead of the authorities. Ingredients included opium, alcohol, laudanum, radium, and other illicit substances. Tapeworm larvae were sometimes suspended in weight-reduction remedies.

By the time the authorities closed in, the wagon, the salesman and his wares were gone, leaving the purchaser or the local doctor to deal with the side effects of the medication: addiction, parasite infestation, cancer or worse. In 2018, we may look at such abuses as a long-gone product of unbridled greed and horrific ignorance, that could not exist in our highly connected and well-educated society of today.

However, indications exist of a modern-day version of yesteryear’s patent medicine traveling show.

During the Civil War, for example, morphine was used as a painkiller for wounds. But many patients given the drug for pain became addicted. To counter the addictive nature of morphine, heroin – supposedly less addictive – was developed by Bayer and was widely adopted for pain reduction. Problem solved – at least until the addictive properties of heroin were manifest.

In 1947, Methadone – an opioid developed by Germany’s IG Farben in the 1930s – was approved for use in the United States to get addicts off heroin. But while the half-life of morphine is one to five hours, and heroin’s half-life is 30 minutes, Methadone’s half-life is 24 hours to 50 hours or more. That makes it useful for maintenance, as addicts can receive a dose in a registered facility once per day, but it makes getting completely off the drug very difficult.

For example, April, a former heroin counselor who does not wish to be identified, said that “in the 1970s, heroin addicts were being channeled to methadone maintenance as a way of stably getting off heroin. The heroin addict would go to a Methadone maintenance program that was fully funded at no out-of-pocket expense to the addict, and receive a daily dose of Methadone.”

Methadone, said April, did not provide the high but did eliminate the physical withdrawal symptoms, and allowed the addict a more stable life. They didn’t have to steal, they could hold a job, and have a somewhat manageable life as long as they went for their daily doses of Methadone. But there was a cost.

“Methadone had a much harder and longer detox period, so if the addict ever wanted to come off maintenance, they were in for a very uncomfortable ride.” Because of that, April’s non-profit detox unit couldn’t handle Methadone detox. “The street guidance,” she said, “was to spend three weeks or so to transition from Methadone back to heroin, and then check into heroin detox and in 3-10 days you were through withdrawal and could go back to the ‘manageable life’ you’d established while on Methadone maintenance.” At that point the addict was drug free but beset with cravings which had been kept at a distance with Methadone.

So why would an addict want to come off Methadone maintenance? “They have to show up at a clinic seven days a week,” said April, “line up with other junkies for their dose of the drug, so they are still a slave to the drug. They became a functional Methadone addict rather than a dysfunctional heroin addict.”

Methadone, as does any opioid, also fosters physical dependence, and long-term use can cause damage to nerves, liver and brain. Perhaps maintenance is an acceptable risk compared to the dangers of dirty needles, overdoses in alleys and robbing liquor stores or engaging in prostitution to secure the hundreds of dollars a day necessary to feed a raging drug habit, but nonetheless it is a far cry from being free of drug slavery.

Because of the dangers of addiction, physicians were reluctant to prescribe opioids for pain, except in the most severe cases. But in 1996, Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin as a timed-release supposedly non-addictive opioid pain reliever. Reassured, physicians began prescribing it.

Contrary to Purdue’s assertion of non-addiction, the FDA recently said OxyContin is more addictive than morphine. So once again, a drug solution becomes the next problem, as evidenced by the “opioid crisis” spurred by OxyContin and other pharmaceuticals. In 2016, according to the New York Times, 64,000 people were killed by drug overdoses of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin. And drug addiction costs the country $78.5 billion a year in healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment and criminal justice.

This problem/solution/problem theme continues today under the title of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) which substitutes a legally prescribed drug such as Methadone, Naltrexone or Buprenorphine for an illegal street drug. MAT is spreading across the country as a solution to the opioid crisis, embraced by cities, counties, states and even prison systems.

One hundred years ago, purveyors of dangerous patent medicine could slip away undetected. But today – with our electronic medical records and coordinated law enforcement systems – we might expect immediate action against such dangers. But OxyContin and its role in the opioid crisis took two decades to spot, with disastrous consequences.

For that reason, prescribing pharmaceuticals as solutions for addiction should be looked at with some skepticism. This is even more important as a rush of breathless reports appear in popular media about the benefits of LSD, ecstasy and marijuana as solutions for depression, PTSD, and more.

By the time we detect the harmful nature of these so-called remedies, the patent-medicine salesman has stuffed the cash into his pockets and moved on, while communities are left to pick up the pieces.

No Comments

A Drug-Free World isn’t Just Something You’re Smoking

Posted on: April 06, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , ,

drugfreeWatching the bad news about drugs, one could think the United States is circling the drain on its way to nodding oblivion. “The War on Drugs has been lost” is the theme, and the alternatives range from legalizing recreational marijuana,  following Oregon’s lead to “defelonize” hard drugs like heroin and meth,  using LSD and other psychedelics to “treat” crime, PTSD and depression, implementing “harm reduction” programs which supply clean needles and a “safe space to shoot up” for addicts, switching addicts from street drugs to pharmaceuticals in something called “Medication Assisted Treatment,” and so on.

One in six Americans is taking a psychiatric happy pill and more than eight million school kids are on psychiatric drugs to make them shut up and sit still. And 64,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2016 alone.

And in spite of skyrocketing profits in the $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry, drug abuse is hitting the economy hard. About 1 million people were out of the workforce in 2015 because of opioid addiction, and in order to hire new employees, some companies have been forced to stop drug testing. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak not the evil word of stigma.”

According to the psychs, stigma is bad, because drug addiction is a brain disease not a moral failing. You catch it from your drug dealer, a friendly psychiatrist, or the people you smoke legal pot with who also have heroin, meth, Oxycodone and other fun stuff in their pockets.

So is the solution just giving up and legalizing everything?

One person who doesn’t think so is Meghan Fialkoff, who with her father took on drug addiction in New York City. She seems to think something can be done about it, and her Foundation for a Drug-Free World took on the challenge of educating kids about drugs. Fialkoff started with after-school programs for elementary kids in the Bronx and the program’s success began spreading.

“Just say no” isn’t enough, kids need to know why, and Fialkoff and her group has reached some 12 million people in New York with a “Just Say Know” message. According to a Scientology Network video, her organization partners with the NYPD, school safety officers, community groups, rappers, musicians, Miss New York and others.

In a recent survey, 81 percent of teens said they had the opportunity to use illicit drugs and more than half tried them. Fialkoff is determined to provide an information vaccination before that happens.

Changing a culture of drug abuse and drug tolerance requires a sea change, a reality adjustment, an awakening to a world of possibilities that in some cases has been plunged into the darkness of drugs.

The link between a culture awash in drugs and the next generation is the dealer looking for his next customers: “Hey kid, wanna try something fun?”

What will your child say?

No Comments

Gov. Pushes Drug Legalization, Decriminalization, Receives Funding from George Soros

Posted on: April 03, 2018, in: , , , , , , ,

Kate BrownOregon Gpv. Kate Brown, who signed into law that state’s decriminalization of hard drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA and more, has received financial support from leftist drug promoter George Soros in Brown’s November general election race.

No Comments

The Medicalizing of America

Posted on: January 19, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash

I’ve been plowing through news feeds for a few months now, and the issues I’m interested in – which focus on the spreading influence of BigPharma, psychiatry and the medication of America – have sort of settled into a number of issues. Here are some of the more prominent ones:

1.   The marketing of psychedelic drugs to cure most everything from depression to crime. The Military is pushing it, as well as anonymous donations to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). LSD is good for you, magic mushrooms are a spiritual tonic, and taking psychedelic trips will make you a good person, empty the prisons, and you can tune in, turn on and drop out like last time.

2.   Along with number 1 above, is the first official admission that anti-depressants are no more effective than placebos and have wildly variant effects on individuals. One in six Americans takes an antidepressant, and about $150 billion is spent per year on such medications and related costs. So BigPharma will take a huge hit unless alternatives such as psychedelics and electroceuticals take hold.

3.   Electroceuticals, the implanting of electrical devices into the brain to deliver electricity or drugs, are back – back from MKULTRA where they were covertly tested on unwitting subjects along with other stuff like LSD as a way to brainwash people and control their behavior. This time it’s out in the open – credit Wikileaks and the revelations about NSA spying for that – under cover of “this will help you.” Might be of some use in Parkinson’s disease, but now the claims are that it cures everything, and BigPharma, like GlaxoSmithKline and the military are funding research in microshocking brains directly or through magnetic stimulation. Electroshock of the type seen in “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” is also back, with the FDA recently lowering the risk factor so children can have their brains zapped too.

4.   Legalization of marijuana began with medical marijuana and transitioned to what we all knew it was for — to get high. Liberal billionaires such as George Soros funded state legalization efforts even though Democrats have mostly stayed silent and let the potheads carry the ball. Liberals want the tax money for social programs, conservatives want the tax money for war, and so opposition has been wimpy. With THC at over 30 percent – up from 3 percent in the 1960s – marijuana induced paranoia and mental illness is on the rise which will be a windfall for the shrinks. Meanwhile, BigPharma is gearing up to produce marijuana, LSD, and so forth. They’ll drop the prices to squeeze out the competition, then control the formerly-illicit-but-now-FDA-approved drug market.

5.   On the tail of marijuana legalization are other measures to mainstream hard drugs through “harm reduction” “decriminalization” and outright legalization. Turns out marijuana was a “gateway drug” and the marketing always starts with “The war on drugs has been lost,” which is a lie. Just turns out that drugs are big money and government wants in on the trillion-dollar BigPharma economy. If it really heats up like it did in Colombia, BigPharma and lots of Pablo Escobar lookalikes will end up running the United States. Some states are going to use the tax money for drug treatment programs which leads to number 6:

6.   “Medication Assisted Treatment” is now being heavily promoted as a treatment for addictions of all kinds: opioid addiction, sex addiction, videogame addiction, food addiction, ad infinitum. And while most of these addictions don’t exist, the psychs say addiction is a chronic brain disease and there’s no cure so addicts must be put on other drugs like methodone, which are paid for by medical insurance, and maintained on those drugs for the rest of their lives. So BigPharma, — which controls the FDA and will soon control Congress, the POTUS, political PACs and so on – will control the solution to the problem of addiction.

7.   The polarization of politics, fights of religious freedom vs. gender equity, and other nasty infighting will most likely be resolved when the parties stirring it up are uncovered, but in the meantime, the stirring up is most likely a distraction to pull attention away from the medicalizing of America and the growth of BigPharma, the psychs and the economic systems fueling it.

No Comments

What BigPharma Learned from Pablo Escobar

Posted on: January 08, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pablo Escobar By Colombian National Police - Colombia National Registry; Colombian National Police, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Pablo Escobar By Colombian National Police – Colombia National Registry; Colombian National Police, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Suppose you were Pablo Escobar, the Columbian drug lord, back in the 1970s and wanted to increase cocaine’s market share. How would you proceed, what strategies would you use, what kind of activities would fill up your “to do” list?

While the coca leaf had been used for centuries by Native Americans of the Andes as a stimulant that wasn’t really a very lucrative market, so expanding into a rich country was a bright idea.

Item 1 On Pablo Escobar’s To Do List: Get Rich Americans Using Cocaine. Well, back in the 1800s Albert Niemann – a German chemist who also invented mustard gas – isolated the really strong stuff from the coca leaf and cocaine was used for surgery and to treat morphine addiction. It was the medication assisted treatment of the day: treat an addiction with another addictive drug. So what followed were wild claims of cocaine’s curative powers, a pick me up, added to all kinds of patent medicine and a drink called Coca Cola after the Coca plant. By the mid 1900s, suspicion grew that cocaine was addictive, so it was made illegal, and it was not readily available, so use dwindled.

Then  in 1974 the New York Times Magazine touted cocaine as a way to get high without needles or addiction, a 1975 book on cocaine said that it was a good drug, and Newsweek Magazine ran illustrations  of stylish men and women doing lines of cocaine, comparing it to champagne and caviar. Well, who wouldn’t love some cocaine?

And here we go back to Pablo Escobar’s “to do” list. Suddenly cocaine was “stylish and non-addictive” and so a demand was created, the warnings from the past were ignored, and demand exploded.

Item 2 on Pablo Escobar’s To Do List: Make $50 Billion. Pablo Escobar, who had been a minor criminal, now entered the smuggling business, expanded production and transshipping points, began paying off or murdering judges, police officers and politicians, and supply met demand and demand just kept growing. Turns out that cocaine is highly addictive, contrary to what was said in the New York Times Magazine, so everyone craved the next line of the drug. As a result, Escobar became one of the richest men in the world, worth an estimated $56 billion by 1990 at today’s exchange rate.

Item 3 on Pablo Escobar’s To Do List: Take Over the Country. In 1982, Escobar – who as part of his public relations campaign, gave money and soccer fields to the poor as well as greasing the palms of officials – was elected an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia , and became one of the most powerful men in the world. He controlled many public officials, ordered assassinations, sponsored terrorist attacks, paid townspeople for being lookouts and gave bonuses for killing police officers. He and his Medellin Cartel were unstoppable for a time.

Pablo Escobar’s Mistakes: However, Escobar made some mistakes, including causing the violent deaths of 20,000 people, and thousands more from addiction and crime, and he himself was murdered at age 44.

BigPharma

Now let’s take up BigPharma, those giant pharmaceutical companies around the world. First, BigPharma invented the street drugs we’ve been trying to just say no to. Big pharma created heroin (Bayer) and LSD (Sandoz). Merck pioneered the commercial manufacture of morphine, distributed cocaine and invented MDMA. OxyContin which started the latest “opioid crisis” was created by German scientists and pushed into society by Purdue Pharma. Crystal meth was first created in Japan and after World War II Abbott Laboratories won FDA approval for meth as a remedy for alcoholism and weight gain. Fentanyl, responsible for the majority of opioid overdose deaths, was invented by Janssen Pharmaceutica.

Now one shouldn’t suppose that BigPharma, being corporations and all, and under the regulation of the Food and Drug Administration and supervised by doctors and psychiatrists do anything as crude as Pablo Escobar. No sir, they are legit, they’ve learned a lot from Escobar, as you can see from what follows.

Item 1 on BigPharma’s ToDo List: Get All Americans on Drugs, Rich and Poor.

OK, so now BigPharma has all those addictive drugs just sitting there on the shelves, and so something has to change. So here comes the “To do” list again, this time from BigPharma. And while Escobar was just a two-bit criminal from a small undeveloped country, BigPharma is big, well-heeled, corporate, and from developed countries.

So here goes: First, opioids were being used mostly for severe pain, like terminal cancer, and doctors are very worried about prescribing opioids because of the danger of addiction. So as a result a lot of people are going around without drugs, and that’s got to change. So in 1996 Purdue Pharma ran some ads about a new opioid called Oxycontin that said it was a timed release opioid and was not habit forming, so doctors could feel good about prescribing it for pain. Well, the dam broke and doctors started prescribing it like mad for everything that might be a bit painful. Contrary to what Purdue said, people got addicted, and like all opioids they needed more and more to stay high until they overdosed and died. If their prescriptions ran out they went to the street for something else, like heroin. But all these overdose deaths looked bad and also got rid of users, so BigPharma invented drugs like Narcan and Evzio that block opioids and bring the overdoser back to life.

The psychs played a part in all this by categorizing addiction as a “chronic brain disease” so once you have it, you need treatment the rest of your life. So once you are brought back to life, you are put on other BigPharma drugs in something called “medication assisted treatment” or MAT. As you may recall, cocaine was originally used to treat morphine addiction, so BigPharma took this idea and updated it. Some of the drugs used for MAT include methodone, Buprenorphine  and Naltrexone.

So the more people that die of opioid overdoses, the more everyone wants “treatment rather than prison” which means put the addict on BigPharma’s MAT drugs for the rest off their lives, and that just kicks up the profits, investors clean up,  and everyone that counts is very happy.

The next thing is to use drugs that make you crazy – like LSD and Marijuana – which now has around 35 percent THC instead of the 3 percent it had back in the hippie 1960s – to treat mental illness. Then when you go crazy, you need antidepressants and antipsychotics, as long as we ignore the fact that the drugs you’re being treated with can make you paranoid, make you hallucinate, and make you go nuts and shoot lots of people in schools, churches and Las Vegas music concerts. But I digress.

Lots of states are now legalizing marijuana. George Soros has spent $80 million bankrolling campaigns to legalize weed, and guess what solution is prescribed for cannabis-induced psychosis? (It does cause psychosis in long-term users ) Psychiatric medications of course! And now Washington State and Colorado who were the first states to legalize weed, are at the top of the list in states needing mental health help for all the weed-smoking wackos going bonkers.

Remember the New York Times Magazine articles all aglow about the benefits and non-addiction of cocaine, the happy articles of how cocaine was very fashionable and like champagne and caviar? Well, BigPharma is taking a leaf from Pablo Escobar’s book, or the media are doing it on their own because they are dopers themselves, here are some of the things that are being promoted as good for you:

Psychedelics are now touted as cures for PTSD, depression, addiction, anxiety, eating disorders, smoking, OCD and crime, among others. Wow, what a miracle drug as long as you forget the 1960s. If you can remember the 60s you weren’t there except maybe for the flashbacks. And the military (remember MKULTRA and LSD testing?) is touting ecstasy as a PTSD treatment. It’s miraculous!  And then when you go really crazy on LSD or ecstasy, what’s the treatment? Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-psychotic drugs. And with government healthcare it’s not just the rich that get hooked and fucked up, it’s EVERYBODY!

OK, so no matter which addictive or psychosis-inducing drug you get hooked on, no matter if you got hooked on the street or in the doctor’s office, there’s another drug that’s legal that you can get with a prescription that is a “cure” for the drug you took before. And if the first three anti-depressants don’t work, there’s another one that might, and if that doesn’t work there’s always electroshock to turn you into a compliant vegetable so you can be given many many drugs by the nice attendants.

As a result, one in six Americans are on psych medications, from antidepressants to ADHD speed, to every kind of shit under the sun. The FDA — a government agency supposed to be the watchdog– accepts payments from drug companies to fast-track approvals, and the head of the FDA was once a consultant to some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. And it’s all completely legal, even though half a million people have died of opioid overdoses from 2000-2015! So compared to BigPharma, Pablo Escobar was in kindergarten! So as a people, we’re circling the drain of addiction and a drugged existence, and BigPharma and the headshrinkers that smooth the takeover are making a killing.

Item 2 on BigPharma’s To Do List: Make a LOT of Money: OK, so while Pablo Escobar made a measley $50 billion, BigPharma makes in excess of $1 trillion with a T and half of that comes from the US and Canada.  Now some of that is for real drugs that do good, like asthma medication, heart pills, insulin, and so forth. But  13% of the US population is on antidepressants and 13 percent on prescription opioids, and some 25 million Americans are addicted to illegal drugs.    And with the psychs pushing the idea that everybody is crazy and “underserved,” and with states legalizing weed and Oregon decriminalizing hard drugs and pushing to legalize psychedelics, expect those numbers to grow pretty fast.

Depressed? Sad? Crazy? Too Happy? Impulsive? Can’t sit in a school desk for 8 hours? Legs restless? Have a child that doesn’t mind? Stressed? (Everyone is you know), Can’t read? Trouble in the bedroom? Like computer games too much? Into drugs? Well, if you answered yes to any of these, you are in luck! You or your kid is nuts and needs some drugs and BigPharma has them, and your insurance will probably pay for them. Meanwhile, BigPharma is pulling in a trillion in revenues which is much better than Pablo’s crew, but BigPharma CEOs are not making much, what with the overhead and all. Compensation of the top 20 ranges from a paltry $13 million to only $41 million per year, nowhere near Pablo’s $30 billion per year in personal income, but you know, BigPharma has to keep a low profile, pay off investors and such, while Pablo just shot anybody who got in the way.

OK, so here are the key points: Use one drug to get off another drug, legalize and then flood the country with drugs, hype the opioid crisis, increase funding for “treatment” which is just more drugs, and let users keep using through something called “harm reduction,” in which the government provides clean needles, safe spaces to shoot up, BigPharma provides clean heroin, or meth, or ecstasy, or whatever, and there’s plenty of Narcan and Evzio around to treat overdoses, and those drugs are all free to users. You try to get users into treatment, or course, with BigPharma MAT drugs and everything is rosy. Pablo would approve.

No Comments

Earliest States to Legalize Weed “Need Mental Health Help”

Posted on: December 13, 2017, in: , , , , , ,

marijuana pixabay Two of the earliest states to legalize recreational marijuana – Colorado and Washington in 2012 — are in dire need of mental health services according to Mental Health America. Weed which in the 1960s had about 3 percent THC, how has as much as 34 percent of the drug, and psychiatrists have cautioned that at present concentrations weed can cause severe mental illness.

Colorado ranks 43rd in the study in “lower rates of access to care,” and Washington ranks 34th. Expect more crazy people as legalization takes hold in other states, and more calls go out for psychiatric help to quell the “mental health crisis of the underserved.”

Legalization of weed, decriminalization of hard drugs and the opioid crisis IMHO is part of a psychiatric/BigPharma marketing plan with the goal of making every American a BigPharma customer.

No Comments

← Older posts